


C'est la guerre

by Vinnocent



Series: Heroes and Wolves [17]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:06:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25058968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinnocent/pseuds/Vinnocent
Summary: A few vignette between the end of the darach saga and the beginning of the nogitsune saga. These four chapters deal with Stiles's place on the team, Marco's recovery, and how the rest of the returned space team are doing...
Relationships: Cassie & Marco (Animorphs)
Series: Heroes and Wolves [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/117640
Kudos: 2





	1. An American Werewolf

**Author's Note:**

> Yet again: I'm reposting these from Tumblr. I'm not writing new fic and do not plan to.

Somewhere in London, England, a heavily accented voice called out, “Jackson Whittemore?”

Jackson stopped in his tracks on the dark sidewalk. He hesitated, remembering the events of Beacon Hills. But that was another life. He was away from that mess now. From losers who ruin everything.

He turned around and faced the voice. It belonged to a woman, average in stature, muscular in build. She looked like she might be of Near Eastern descent, but the accent was French. She stood formally, but she was dressed casually. Her long hair was pulled into a high, tight ponytail. She was probably old enough to be his mother. “Do I know you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I represent the interests of OTAN.”

He looked at her sideways. “Uh… Is that the new restaurant over on–?”

“In English, it is NATO,” she told him.

Jackson laughed loudly. “You’ve totally got the wrong Whittemore, lady,” he said, backing up a step. “I’m just a high school kid.”

She took a step forward. “I hear you have very interesting genetics, Jackson.”

Jackson froze. He really, really should have learned his Beacon Hills lessons. Realizing it was too late to claim that he didn’t know what she was talking about, he tried, “Look, whatever it is you want? I’m not interested.” He backed up another step.

She smiled slowly, and her eyes glowed red in the night. “It’s cute that you thought I was asking,” she drawled.

Jackson ran.

He didn’t run fast enough.


	2. Lessons to Learn

The last person that Stiles had expected at his door was Braeden Vela. “Uh, hi?” he said.

She grunted her hello, then held out a cardboard box to him marked “plants and symbols.”

“Uh… What is that?” Stiles asked suspiciously.

“Training,” she said, which made him no less suspicious of the box. When he continued staring at her and the box open-mouthed, she sighed and pushed past him into the house. She looked around, found the coffee table, and set the box down there. “Look, I don’t care that she has no pack, I’m Mom’s emissary. My dad was her emissary, and I worked _hard_ to make sure that I could be, too.”

“Why are you in my living room giving me your life story?” Stiles asked, closing the door behind him so the neighbors wouldn’t ask about emissaries later.

“I’m hoping to convince you to let me train you,” said Braeden.

“Train… me?” Stiles repeated.

“To be Scott’s emissary,” she explained. “So I don’t have to.”

“Wow, you should sell shit for a living,” Stiles grumbled. “Most convincing argument I’ve ever heard.”

“Look–“ she started, but he shook his head.

“No, I’m in,” he said. “I’m totally 100% behind anything that helps Scott. Anything that makes me less…”

“Useless?” Braeden suggested.

“I bet you have a million friends,” Stiles bit back, which only got him a confused look from Braeden. “But aren’t there a ton of Chee who are already equipped for the job and willing to take the position?”

“That’s…” Braeden fidgeted. “That’s actually why Mom wanted me to take the position. She thinks the Chee will offer if it’s left vacant too long, and Scott, of course, will welcome the help. Once he finally admits he _is_ an alpha, that is.” She rolled her eyes. “But Scott’s viewpoint is too like theirs. What use is an advisor that tells you what you already know? An alpha and an emissary should be a balanced pair.”

“You think I balance out Scott?” Stiles asked, surprised.

“I have never met anyone less Chee-like who wasn’t evil,” Braeden said. Her eyes combed over him then. “To be honest, I’m still not sure that you aren’t.”

“Good to know.” Stiles turned toward the box. “So, what’s this?”

“Plants and symbols,” she said like it was obvious. She reached forward and pulled off the box lid, revealing a massive stack of books.

Stiles’s eyes widened. “You carried this yourself?” he demanded. “Are _you_ human?”

Braeden rolled her eyes. “Yes, I am human. I’m just the un-useless variety,” she snipped.

“Okay, first of all, un-useless is not a word,” said Stiles. “Secondly, please tell me this is the _entire_ emissary course.”

Braeden raised an eyebrow. “No?” she said. “It’s just plants and symbols. I thought giving you too much at once might interfere with your schoolwork.”

Stiles gave her a scathing glare, but moved to sit on the couch so he could start looking through the books. “A lot of herbalism here,” he mumbled.

“The information often conflicts, so cross-reference is beneficial,” she explained.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything in here that helps with nightmares?”

“No.”

Stiles glanced up at her to see if she was serious about these overly simplistic answers of hers. She was. He sighed and leaned back on the couch, staring at the box. “I’m feeling learned already,” he taunted. “Any suggestion on where to start?”

“The top,” she told him.


	3. Wound Up

Marco couldn’t sit still. He reorganized the entire basement. He cleaned all the dishes in the sink. He’d inspected the entire house; though for _what_ , no one had figured out yet. He spent over an hour flipping through channels on the television before he started pacing. It wasn’t blatant pacing, the way Isaac would do – wearing out a spot on the floor while thinking something over. No, Marco would leave to go do something, then leave that place to do another thing, then leave that place and so on and so forth, pacing a senseless web over the entire house without actually accomplishing anything.

“That’s it,” Cassie said, shoving her laptop off her lap and into the floor. “You’ve been driving everyone insane. Let’s go.”

Marco turned from where he’d been looking through the bookshelf again. “I wasn’t doing anything!” he protested. Then, with sudden suspicion, “Go where?”

“Flying,” said Cassie, but Marco just stared at her, puzzled. Something twisted in her gut. “Your harrier morph?” she prompted. “You can still morph it, can’t you?”

Marco shrugged. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I honestly forgot I had it. I haven’t had a reason to use it in ages.”

“Well,” she said. “There’s only one way to find out.” She motioned toward the door. “Come on, let’s go.” Isaac was watching them curiously and distrustingly from the couch. Luckily, Melissa was at work, and Scott had gone to Stiles’s house to avoid Marco’s incessant activity.

But Marco still hesitated. “Uh, but… What if I don’t remember how to?” he asked.

Cassie raised a skeptical eyebrow. “How to… morph?” she asked. “You just morphed chimp to reach the high shelf this morning.”

“No,” he said, voice quiet. He wasn’t looking at her. “How to fly.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Marco, you’ve never known how to fly. The harrier does. Just let it do its job.”

Marco sighed. “Cassie, I don’t want to fly,” he finally admitted.

Cassie watched him for a moment, unsure what to make of this. Flying had always been their way of cooling off. “Okay,” she said. “Do you want to tell me why?”

“Because bird morphs don’t have good defenses,” he said bluntly.

Cassie glanced toward the door. That wasn’t something she should push, but at the same time, she _had_ to get Marco out of the house. He needed to work out all this built up energy. Suddenly, she smiled as an idea occurred to her.

He eyed her suspiciously. “What?” he asked.

“Wanna go be dogs at the park?” she asked.

Marco laughed hard at that. “That’s so stupid, I have to do it,” he said, finally stepping away from the bookshelf.

Half an hour later, a _filthy_ toy poodle was running circles around a husky in the park, yapping its head off at anyone who tried to come near. <I can’t believe you still remember Euclid,> said Cassie.

<Well, I thought to myself ‘What’s the most defensible dog morph?’> Marco said, pausing briefly to scratch himself. <And then I remembered Satan-with-a-perm.>

<I see I wasn’t wrong about the pent-up energy,> said Cassie.

<Yeah?> he said. <Where’s yours?> He pounced onto her tail and started nipping at it. Well, pretending to nip at it. Cassie had already warned him multiple times to not touch her. Instead, he yipped and bit the air while bouncing around her tauntingly. <You’re a puppy, Cassie! Be a puppy!>

<I am an adult dog, and _stop that_ ,> Cassie protested with a laugh.

<All dogs are puppies, Cassie,> Marco huffed. <Don’t you know anything?> He pounced in front of her in play position with his head against the grass and his hind in the air. <So what did you want to talk about?> he asked.

Cassie watched him carefully. <I didn’t say anything about talking,> she said.

<You’ve been wanting to for a while,> he said. He exhaled in a huff and finally sat down. She was breathing his breath, but the dog side of her found that relaxing and even intimate. <No full house here. Just us and our brains.>

<The full house isn’t half the problem of just not knowing what to say,> she admitted.

<I’m that much of a timebomb, huh?>

Cassie rolled over. <Not a timebomb,> she said. <More a… a friend I’m concerned about but can’t quite put my finger on the exact reason why I’m concerned.>

<Nice metaphor,> Marco laughed, and she laughed, too.

Eventually, Cassie said, <I don’t want to be insulting or anything, but… have you thought about… about what if it _is_ real?>

Marco snorted. <Have you thought about what if it’s not?> he retorted.

<Lots, actually,> she said. Marco tilted his head, then squirmed a bit into a different position so he could read her better. She shrugged her doggy shoulders, ignoring how telling that would be to strangers. <We lead really trippy lives, Marco. It _has_ occurred to me that my experiences may be imagined or… I don’t know. Some other form of non-reality.

<But, if it’s not, there’s literally nothing I can do about it but wait for things to play out. This is the board that’s in front of me right now. It does no harm to play the game,> she said. <I think… I think that there’s this idea out there that you have to play the right board game and play it perfectly so you can meet a goal. But that’s not the point of board games is it? And, in life, you don’t get to pick which one you have, so… So shouldn’t you just play it for fun? No matter what happens at the end?>

<So you want me to give up and play this out like it’s real?> Marco summarized.

<I want you to be happy,> Cassie said. <I’m just… I don’t know. If that’s not what’s making you unhappy, then okay. I just… I want to help.>

<I just got back, Cassie,> he told her. <“Happy” is kind of a stretch goal.> He sighed in her mind and took his time before answering, <I just… I can’t… I can’t _see_ it, Cassie. I wanna believe. I want to throw myself into it. Try to make up for lost time. Make it up to them. Be happy. But I… all I see is a dream that’s gonna disappear any second with another bloody murder. It will. It’s a fact of life. Unlife. Whatever. _This_ … This isn’t fucking happening, and no amount of well-wished attempts at logic spouted by another cruel caricature is going to change that.>

He stood and trotted off back to the place they’d ditched their outer clothes. Cassie rolled back onto her stomach and watched him disappear between trees before speaking again. <You really think I wouldn’t recognize Homer?> she asked before turning to face the golden retriever sitting several yards away. When she received no answer, she climbed to her feet. <Talk to us face-to-face. I won’t have you sneaking around. It’s beneath you to play these games.>

She loped off to join Marco in the woods.


	4. End Game

In an abandoned distillery with a spiral cut into a side wall, Senior Airman Jake Berenson was moving a rather large piece of equipment off a truck with a large cart. The piece of equipment in question looked something like a large, long, hollow glass pod which had somehow gotten itself lodged in a small computer bank.

“That doesn’t look like a distiller,” said a voice behind him.

Jake glanced over his shoulder. He smiled because smiling is the polite thing to do, even when you’re fairly certain that a smile is unwelcome. “Erek,” he said. “I didn’t know you lived in Beacon Hills now.”

“I don’t,” said Erek. “And you did know. Just like I know it was 3MP who _almost_ got a hold of Chee remains.”

Jake pulled the cart to a stop and kicked a lever to hold the wheels. “Is that so?” he asked blandly.

“You told them, didn’t you?” Erek said. Even after twenty years of loathing, he still, somehow, sounded hurt by the idea.

Jake sighed and turned to him again. “No, Erek, I didn’t tell them about the Chee,” he said wearily. “But when super-advanced robot parts are being left around in what _look_ to be murder scenarios, people start getting curious.”

“It was Special Agent Berenson who got them back to us,” Erek pointed out.

Jake nodded stiffly. “It was,” he agreed. He turned back to the machine and began setting the controls.

“So you wouldn’t have stopped them?”

“Nope.”

“Why?” Erek demanded.

Jake glanced toward him again, weariness beginning to ebb into hostility. “Because they’re not wrong, Erek,” he said, returning his attention to his work. “This planet was attacked. That can happen again.”

Erek’s expression had melted from hurt to pure horror. “So that _is_ an atomic restabilizer, isn’t it?” he said. “You know what Eva did here, and you’re bringing him back.”

Jake shook his head and flipped the switch that started the machine whirring. He turned again to Erek. “An examination of the body could tell–“

“You’re going to cut him up?!” Erek demanded.

“He’s a murderer, Erek,” Jake told him. “And a monster.”

“He still has autonomy! He has a right to die in peace.”

Jake rolled his eyes. He stepped back from the machine. “Okay, then,” he said. He gestured to the machine. “Turn it off.”

Erek looked at the machine. He started to step forward, then appeared to change his mind. “What will you do if I do?” he asked quietly.

Jake snorted. “What makes you think I’d do something?”

“Because you’re an asshat.” Erek looked up at him with an angry distrust. “And a dangerous one at that.”

Jake laughed. “I don’t have to do anything, Erek, because you’re not gonna do it,” he said. “Because your programming won’t let you. Because, deep down in your bolts and circuits, you know that sometimes you have to make sacrifices to keep the peace.”

And there was that look of horror again. “You’re turning people into weapons,” he realized. “Again. You did it to us. You did it to Rachel. You did it to James and his friends. And now you’re doing it to–” He cut himself off suddenly and looked again at the machine, eyes slowly widening. “You’re not here just for him are you?”

Jake snorted again and shoved his hands in his pockets. “It’s been nice seeing you again, Erek,” he said before turning away to head back to the truck. “I really miss your useless pontifications.”


End file.
